An ecard is an electronic postcard sent from one user to another. Numerous ecard websites provide means for a user to select a virtual postcard and send it to another user. Ecard notifications are typically sent over the Internet and received through email. For example, a user has a friend with an upcoming birthday, and the user wants to send an ecard message to this friend, wishing them a happy birthday. Accordingly, the user accesses an ecard website, selects a prewritten card style with image and message, and possibly adds their own personal message to the card. Then, the user specifies the friend's email address and selects a control to send the ecard. The ecard website then sends to the intended recipient an email message with a link to the ecard provider's website. By following the link in the email message, the recipient accesses and reads the ecard.
It is worth noting that ecards have become fairly sophisticated over time. Moreover, the number of templates available to select from on ecard websites has also increased tremendously. For examples, some ecard websites now have thousands of templates to choose from, some of which include animation, others talking greetings, and yet others are entirely interactive (e.g., asking the recipient to perform an action or press a button).
With the number of ecard choices to select from, and the number of features available when designing the ecard, the process of selecting the “perfect” card (e.g., a card that expresses the right sentiment in the right way) can be time consuming. Thus, once the perfect card has been found, it would be nice to be able to use the ecard in the same way that physical greetings cards are used. With physical greeting cards, it is common for groups of people (e.g. a group a coworkers, members of a family, etc.) to personalize and sign the same card. Unfortunately, current ecard technology does not provide the means for groups to send a single group-signed and group-customized ecard.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.